Profile

Jose Pino, Marketing and Management

Hometown:

Lowell

“My classes were well aligned with the work I ended up doing.”

Jose Pino, a 2007 graduate of UMass Lowell’s Manning School of Business, can vouch for the value of internships. Pino, who earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing and management, worked as an intern at Jeanne D’Arc Credit Union while he was a student and was offered a full-time marketing job when he graduated. He is now the Credit Union’s virtual banking specialist, overseeing all online products and services, social media and internet advertising for the financial cooperative, which has $950 million in assets and more than 58,000 members throughout the Merrimack Valley.

“I was very fortunate,” Pino says. “With my internship and my course work, I was well prepared for my job.”

Pino’s preparation for the professional world began when he was a student at Nashoba Valley Technical High School. He enrolled in a program that allowed him to take classes at Middlesex Community College while he was still a high school student and he also started working part-time at the credit union as a teller. He earned a high school diploma (he was the valedictorian of his graduating class) and his associate’s degree from Middlesex at the same time. He was 17.

After transferring to UMass Lowell from Middlesex Community College, Pino immersed himself in his studies at the Manning School and continued working at the Credit Union. He interned in the Credit Union’s marketing department, a position that evolved into a permanent part-time job while he was a student.

Pino joined Jeanne D’Arc at a time of industry-wide upheaval and transformation spurred by online banking and mobile technology. His courses at the Manning School, many of which involved group projects, actual business case studies and tight deadlines, provided excellent background for his work. He continues to apply many of the concepts and principles he learned as a student to his work every day.

“Consumer behavior has changed. A lot of traffic comes into the bank online,” he says. “My classes were well aligned with the work I ended up doing.”

A Lowell native, Pino recently moved to Lawrence, the city where his wife grew up. He is taking an active role in the community, serving on the board of the Greater Lawrence Young Professionals Network. In June 2012, he graduated from the Deshpande Foundation’s Merrimack Valley Sandbox Leadership Institute, a yearlong program that develops leadership and social innovation skills. And his work at Jeanne D’Arc was recognized with a Rising Star award by the Massachusetts Credit Union League.

As he sees the growth on the UMass Lowell campus – new academic buildings and new dormitories sprouting up, new programs and more students enrolling − he feels a strong sense of pride.

“I see how UMass Lowell is involved in everything in the city and I think that’s a great thing,” he says. “The growth on campus has taken the school to a whole new level.”